American households have shrunk by more than a full person in less than a century. Here's to filling up an SUV with kids despite it all.

As a father of sons—my world—I stand armed with two of them, and a daughter, whom it's possible I like the very best. But one can never be too sure of these things.

My sons are just boys but I can see the fight in them. And my chest aches when I watch them act out film sequences—dressed the part—every bit of stern in their flips and front kicks off our sofa. "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth."

In ancient times, the men stood on guard at the city gates. Prepared to deal with any threat, these protectors, these men, kept alert through the watches of the night. With their sons they remained shoulder to shoulder, each breath drawn in defense of the other, in defense of everyone within the gates.

I like that picture. I like what it says about solidarity, and about the deep heart of a man. I like the imagery, too, and how it reminds me we're made from the stuff of war and desire. I especially like that it makes me think of my own boys, who'd be glad to protect anything if just given the word.

Some months ago, my wife and I found out we're expecting our fourth. The news came in the midst of some dark days and so I took it differently than I'd have taken it without the depression. I processed it alone, the way I'd been processing everything since last fall when we arrived in the Midwest via Miami. Some weeks later, the people would tell me it was the coldest winter they'd seen in decades. It didn't go easy on these Florida bones, not at all. That aside, I've considered the way of life here—the pace of things—and how it's so unlike my own experience. And there's apparently this thing called nature.

You see, Miami has fine sprawling beaches but it's mostly big buildings, bodegas, and urban development. All wonderful things, truly, only not on the level of the Ozarks, with its rivers and bluffs and mammoth caves. Yesterday I saw God at a place called Sequiota Park. He's taller than I remember.

I've been a father long enough to know that with children comes heartbreak. It's a heartbreak fathers understand. The heartbreak of wins and of losses, the heartbreak of ice cream hitting the pavement, of kindergarten music programs, missed and made free throws, and all the other tiny moments that bring them joy and pain, if only for a short time.

When I think about us having another boy, I feel something like pressure. Am I one of these noble men with so many arrows? Here, where I live now in Southwest Missouri, fathers have a school of kids, like fish.

Still, I've never seen so many fathers with so many children out there—at playgrounds and mall food courts.

It makes me think of how we view masculinity in our culture, and the great change we've all opted into undertaking. Things took a turn after the Industrial Revolution, to be sure. Men began to focus more on their careers and making money, leaving women to fill the gaps. These days, men are changing diapers and packing lunches at impressive speeds. The roles are interchangeable, as they always should have been. Gen Y'ers, despite a stunted economy, are having more children and compelling happy lives around them.

In just a few months, mine will be a family of six, a big one by many standards. My friends back home have maybe one or two children—three, tops—just like the numbers say. Around these parts they have four and five and eight, packed out in Suburbans on their way to someplace green. I admire these men, secretly. Like many a father, I often fantasize about being the greatest one there is. It's a fantasy fathers understand. And these men here, these are the one's to beat. I think of how they're building the earth, populating it with so many arrows. And I think about what we're teaching our sons, and the type of wisdom we're imparting.

Really, I look at my kids and wonder if I'm doing it right.

There's a mysterious thing that happens when you stare into the face of a son or a daughter. Your world-weary eyes meet their blameless ones. They see the colorful world. There's an absence of circumstance in them. It's in these that you understand what your work will be.

And there is so much to teach. In love, I'll serve my boys talks on altruism and charity and work and community and goodness. I'll dream over them their own dreams and not my own. And I'll give them space, knowing that helicopter parenting only makes for children that hate you later on.

Young Canadians, the numbers say, are having more kids than previous generations, and they're letting them run free. They "embrace imperfection." They've figured some things out.

Time will slip away and they'll marry, maybe bless me with grandchildren. And I'll beam, so proud of what I took part in building. A big family with big love and big Everything. I'll watch closely, but not too closely, as they raise their arrows, knowing my influence can only be measured by the way they love their own.

Right now, with a house quiet and at peace, nothing sounds better than all of this.

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